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ASCAP Refuses To Debate Lessig
An anonymous reader writes "Back in June ASCAP oddly declared war on free culture, specifically calling out Creative Commons, EFF and Public Knowledge, making a number of false statements about all three. The war of words continued as the three groups responded politely, pointing out the errors in the statement from ASCAP's Paul Williams. Larry Lessig wrote a blog post where he asked Williams to debate these topics, saying that it might help if they could get away from making false statements. Williams has now publicly declined to debate saying that it's not worth his time, and once again attacking these groups for trying to 'silence' him. It's difficult to see how a request for a public discussion and debate is an attempt to silence, but that's ASCAP's position and they're sticking to it."
you can't just throw "science" or "evidence" at real world problems and get an unambiguously optimal answer.
Perfection doesnt exist, stop asking for it. Unless you live on a plane.
This is what we have here. Lessig values culture, the ASCAP value money for their members. Even with robot-like logical reasoning and clairvoyant wisdom, both sides are going to utterly fail at convincing the other.
They both value culture. ASCAP thinks a system that pays people to produce culture produces more/better culture. This is why evidence based legislature is beneficial, it forces attacking of policy rather than the people.